


Shades of Bywater

by Terrantalen



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Fluff and Smut, M/M, One True Pairing, Sexy Times
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 03:33:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17593814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terrantalen/pseuds/Terrantalen
Summary: Set a day or two after the Battle of Bywater, Merry and Pippin consider their future together.





	Shades of Bywater

The celebration seemed likely to go on all night. There was newly liberated beer to be drunk, pipe weed to be smoked, and food to be eaten. Everywhere, it seemed, were hobbits celebrating merrily, dancing or singing, or otherwise erupting with joy over their victory.

Merry watched it all a little apart. He’d slipped away from the crowd and into a darkening patch of wood where he’d leaned back against a tree and then not come out again. He was happy, but weary of the attention he was receiving and wanted now only a little quiet before the real work would begin. 

The Shire was so much changed, he hardly knew how it would be put to rights again. All of the new brick would have to come down, but so many smials had been burnt out or destroyed that it seemed some of it would have to stand for a time until new homes could be built for those who had been displaced. And there would be a hard winter ahead, even with all of the newly discovered stores of food, if what Farmer Cotton said was true.

Merry closed his eyes and let the sounds of revelry drift around him.

“Merry?” Pippin whispered, “Why are you standing alone in the dark? Everyone is searching for you, you know.”

Merry opened his eyes. His young cousin was still arrayed in the gear of Gondor and would have looked rather fierce, but for the gentle smile playing at his lips. Pippin ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it up and then yawned, “What time is it?” Pippin asked.

Merry laughed, “I don’t know how you expect me to answer. I’ve no more access to a clock than you.”

Pippin’s eyes crinkled with amusement, “No, I suppose you don’t.” He looked around them, “So? Resumed your fondness for the quiet of trees, then?”

“I was bound to eventually,” said Merry. “I just needed a break from, well, everything, I suppose.”

Pippin sniffed, “I know. I never thought we’d need to fight within the bounds of the Shire. I can hardly believe all that’s happened since we’ve been gone. More to here than what’s happened to us, anyway. At least the strange things that we’ve done took place far away. The thought of the Tooks raising an army of guerillas is quite ten times more amazing than a walking, talking tree, even if my father was at the head of it all.”

Merry smiled and then they fell silent. There was a sound of drunken laughter and the joyous trickle of music played upon a flute that was joined by a drum. Soon enough, a fiddle broke in and a little band formed. The music was quick and cheerful as a bubbling stream, a song that Merry recognized.

There was singing from the crowd and Pippin joined in softly where they stood:

“There was a maid down the Delving who was a sweet fair lass,  
often you could find her running out upon the grass,  
she met a lad and he said, ‘Love, I’ll make you mine,’  
so he made to woo her with words both bold and fine,  
oh, lady, gold of hair and twice as fair as the bright sunrise,  
hear my plea, look your love at me, and see me in your eyes…”

“I’ve always rather preferred the ribald version,” said Merry with a wave of his hand. “This is all sweet tripe and nonsense.”

Pippin canted his head. Merry could just barely make out his expression in the dimness, “I think you just like the bit about having her upon the grass,” he said with a small twitch of his eyebrows.

Merry felt his pulse increase its pace, “I do like that bit.” He let his eyes linger on Pippin’s face, then he traced him up and down with his gaze in a slow, appreciative traverse. When their eyes met again, Pippin sucked his bottom lip into his mouth.

Pippin cleared his throat, “Do you suppose that we could…?” he took a hesitating step toward Merry, his hair catching in the light of the distant bonfire before he passed into the shadow of a tree.

“What?” Merry asked, his tone going smooth and flat, dark like a worn pebble at the bottom of a river. “What would you like?”

Merry continued to lean back against the tree. He crossed one of his legs in front of the other and shifted forward slightly, wishing that it was brighter so that he could see the flush that he knew would be blossoming across Pippin’s cheeks. 

Pippin took another step toward him, “Are you going to make me say it?”

A flood of desire swept over Merry, “Yes, I’m afraid I am.”

Pippin’s eyes fluttered. “In that case, Meriadoc,” Pippin halted, his eyes looked down toward the leaves at their feet and then back up at Merry. It didn’t matter that they’d been together times beyond counting and had each other in countless ways; Pippin was always shy over forming the words. “I want…” he stopped again.

“Yes?” Merry asked him, now standing straight and tilting his head.

Pippin licked his lips, “I want to,” he said, stepping into Merry’s space, and looking up into his eyes, “to… touch you.”

“Alright,” Merry said.

Pippin placed his hands against Merry’s chest, “I want to kiss you.”

Merry lowered his lips to Pippin’s. He kissed him sweet and soft and then pulled away, “Like that?”

“More,” Pippin said. “You know I always want more.”

Merry kissed him again, felt Pippin’s fingers tangle in his hair, but Merry kept his own hands still at his sides, though they itched at the self-inflicted prohibition. 

Pippin seemed to realize the lack of them, “Touch me, Merry,” he whispered against Merry’s jaw, “Touch me, please.”

“Where?” Merry asked.

“Everywhere,” Pippin answered breathlessly.

If it had not been so long since they’d had leave to be together, Merry would have made him be more precise. He’d have dragged it out until they were both so desperate that they’d have lost the power of speech by the end, but it had been long, and they did not have time, nor privacy enough for Merry to do all that he wanted. Even still he could hear the sounds of celebration not more than two hundred feet distant.

He pulled Pippin to the far side of the tree and pushed him back against it. Merry slipped his hands underneath Pippin’s tabard. Merry bunched Pippin’s linen shirt in his fist as he pulled it up. The cool ripple of mail met his fingers, “Why are you wearing so many damned clothes?” Merry asked him.

“At least I don’t have buckles. This leather you’re wearing is covered in straps.” 

Merry hiked Pippin’s mail shirt up, even as his other hand unhitched his cousin’s belt. He finally felt the bare heat of Pippin’s skin against his hand. Pippin’s stomach was smooth and flat, and his trousers dropped off his hips with little resistance once Merry had undone his buttons. Merry rested his hand on the bare skin of Pippin’s hip. He leaned against him, “Where should I touch you now, Pip?”

“Oh, Merry,” Pippin said with an edge of frustration, “Help me get your damned armor off first. I want to…” 

“What do you want to do?” it was work for Merry to keep his tone even and teasing, but he did it. He traced Pippin’s hip bone with his fingertip and Pippin shivered.

“I want to suck your… your nipples, I want your skin laid out for me so I can put my mouth all over you. Merry, I want to have you helpless for me.”

Merry laughed, “I already am that, pet, rest assured.” He helped Pippin with the buckles on his armor and slid it off his shoulders. Merry still wore a shirt and mail beneath that. Pippin tugged at it insistently and Merry let him slip both over his head, though the November air was cold.

Immediately, Pippin’s mouth was questing across his throat, down his collarbone. Pippin took Merry’s nipple in his mouth and pressed his tongue flat against it. Sensation, wild and rippling, burst across Merry’s skin, “Pippin,” he hissed.

Pippin’s hand palmed Merry’s hardness through his trousers. Merry bucked against the touch. He grabbed a handful of Pippin’s arse, pulled him close so that he could feel Pippin’s arousal resting against his thigh.

Distantly, Merry heard the band playing another melody, but it registered as only a fractured piece at the edge of his consciousness. Pippin sucked Merry’s other nipple into his mouth, savaging him with delirious abandon, now rough and unhindered that he didn’t need to speak.

Merry could hear himself softly keening, let Pippin take him to the very edge of his breaking point, as Merry’s cock was finally freed from his trousers. Pippin’s hand was on him in a moment and Merry rutted heedlessly into his fist as it closed around him. He was spent within seconds.

Pippin seemed surprised as he pulled back from Merry’s chest, his lips looking wet and swollen. Merry seized them furiously and pressed his cousin back against the tree once more. He dropped to his knees and pinioned Pippin against the tree with his shoulder. He looked up into Pippin’s eyes, saw the desperate heat that he had kindled there, before he took Pippin’s cock into his mouth.

There was a time to tease and go slow and then there was a time for haste and Merry gauged that this was a time for the latter. He sucked Pippin and worked him with his hand like he had no other purpose in life. Pippin was gasping, his hips fighting against the restriction of Merry’s shoulder where it held him against the tree. He moaned and Merry was glad of the noise and music further afield and hoped that it was enough to mask Pippin’s panting wail as he came.

Merry sank back onto his heels and looked at Pippin leaning back against the tree, his breath coming in gasps. A satisfaction deeper than that of his release filled him as he watched Pippin recover. Pippin rolled his neck and finally looked at Merry again.

He reached out a hand and helped Merry to his feet. “You’re naked, you know,” Pippin said to him softly.

“Aye, and you have no trousers.”

Pippin laughed and enfolded Merry in his arms. Merry rested up against him and let Pippin stroke the bare skin of his back. “We’re going to get caught out if we can’t stop from being reckless like this,” Merry said as Pippin rested his head upon Merry’s shoulder.

“You started it,” Pippin reminded him.

“Did I?”

“I’m fairly certain. I don’t know, you always start it, one way or another.”

“Just because you can’t keep your hands off me doesn’t mean that I always start it.”

They stood that way until Merry began to shiver. Reluctantly, he let Pippin go and began to hunt for his clothes in the woods. He dressed to the best of his ability in the darkness but he left his leather off; the buckles were a burden to do more than once in a day.

Pippin found his trousers but seemed to have mislaid his belt. They couldn’t find it in the dark.

The celebration seemed to be quieting, the music turning slow and drifting gently in the air. Merry began to walk back to the party but Pippin caught his hand.

“Merry,” he said, his voice soft and hesitant again. A line of tension was etched between his brow, his mouth was an uncertain, thin line.

“What, love?” Merry asked him once it became clear that Pippin would not continue to speak without prompting.

Pippin turned Merry’s hand in his, squeezed it gently, “Do you think that we could… that is, do you think it would cause too much comment if we… lived together for a bit?”

Merry snorted, “I think we shall cause no small amount of comment no matter what we do from now on.”

“So…” Pippin said uncertainly.

Merry considered him, “Could I say no? Even if there will be talk, I don’t care. It won’t last forever, you know. You’ll have to go home to be Thain, I’ll have to go home to be the Master. One day, we’ll have to separate again, but I think for now… we can give ourselves time.”

Pippin stepped into Merry’s arms, “Give me forever, Merry.”

Merry pressed a kiss into Pippin’s hair. “I wish I could. I’ll give you now and someday and always.”


End file.
